2008/05/12
Production capacity of medium-small sized IPS liquid crystals will be expanded by about 25%
Hitachi Displays, Ltd. (President: Yoshiyuki Imoto, hereafter referred to as Hitachi Displays) decided to additionally invest about 8,100 million yen in response to the growing demand for high-resolution IPS liquid crystal (LC) used for mobile phones and digital single-lens reflex cameras. The investment was approved in September 2007, and in addition to the ongoing investment of about 8,600 million yen to expand the production capacity, a total of 16,700 million yen is invested in order to enhance the facilities and equipment during FY 2007 and 2008, which will increase the substrate production capacity by about 25% from about 80,000 sheets per month in FY 2007 to about 100,000 sheets per month by FY 2009 in the fourth generation substrate size equivalent.
The IPS liquid crystals used for large LC TV displays, with high resolution and wide viewing angle, are highly evaluated for their excellent image quality. With the increasing demand for digital single-lens reflex cameras and the popularization of mobile phones with one-segment broadcasting receiver function, there has been growing demand for IPS LC with high resolution and wide viewing angle in the area of medium-small sized LC displays, whereby the contrast and color tone of an image is scarcely affected, even when viewed from an angle.
In response to these trends, Hitachi Displays has decided upon an investment of about 8,600 million yen in September 2007, including equipment for microfabrication, in order to further improve the performance of IPS LCs* and increase the production capacity of the V3-line in the Mobara operations. Moreover, additional investment of about 8,100 million yen was approved this time, and with a total investment of 16,700 million yen, the substrate production capacity of overall operations will be increased by about 25% from about 80,000 sheets per month in FY 2007 to about 100,000 sheets per month by FY 2009 in the fourth generation substrate size equivalent, to meet the growing demand for medium-small sized IPS LC displays.
*In October 2007, Hitachi Displays developed IPS-Pro-Prollezza technology which achieved 1.4 times superior brightness to our previous products. Products utilizing this technology will be released on the market in FY 2008. IPS-Pro-Prollezza is an abbreviation of In-Plane Switching-Provectus-Prollezza. Provectus means "revolution" in Latin, while Prollezza is a word combining Progress and Bellezza (which means "beauty" in Italian).
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What is IPS technology? |
The IPS technology is a TFT liquid crystal technology of the In-Plane-Switching method with behaviors that differ from those of typical TFT liquid crystals of the TN or other methods. The technology was released in 1995 and commercialized in 1996 by Hitachi, Ltd., which has evolved through Super-IPS, Advanced-Super IPS to IPS-Pro. The IPS technology, whereby liquid crystal molecules spin around on a plane parallel to a TFT substrate in the In-Plane-Switching mode and the movement of these molecules is very simple, featuring a wide viewing angle, excellent color reproducibility, and high response speed in halftone processing. The IPS technology has significantly resolved the viewing angle issues of liquid crystals, without using viewing angle compensation films, that affected the contrast and color tone depending on the viewing angle, and delivers images that are "beautiful, even when viewed from an angle."
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